No small fortune
by SCP-blank
Summary: AU, time-travel. Hugo Weasley, now Victor Hugo, has fun in the past as he builds up an army in order to prevent muggles from finding out about the wizarding world and committing mass genocide. Part One - the Voldemort Problem.


As an avid reader of fanfictions, this popped into my head as an inspiration of other writers' work. Among the many, these are what I remember : Disobediencewriter, Batsutosai, Esama.

AN: If you like to pretend the epilogue never happened, don't read this story. Main character is from that epilogue. Also, the story has minimal dialogue because of its short format. Unbetaed. Virtually no action.

* * *

**Part One**

* * *

**Middle of the XXI century, Switzerland, 100 metres below Geneva.**

Time travel, when three geniuses combined their minds into solving it, had been only a cookie of moderate toughness to crack. Together with the Scamander twins that were only a fraction younger than him, Hugo Weasley now was about to embark on a one-way journey to the past.

A journey he won't be able to repeat if he screwed up royally. And knowing how terminally stupid wizards were in the seventies (or at any point of time, really) that was almost a definite thing.

That is, not to say, that Hugo Weasley - one of the only two Slytherins in his extended family - didn't have a fall back plan. Hugo had read that reality travel was always a reliable option to choose when running from an apocalypse and he was quite prepared to chose the option if need arose.

The hide-out the three geniuses were currently using was the former underground base for LHC - a muggle creation that had caused more questions to arise than to get answered, and as a result - abandoned years before the present. It was a perfect hiding place from now militant muggles, who were in the pursue of the 'magicals' - a pursue that to Hugo and other smart wizards and witches (only a miniscule part of the wizarding population) deemed ridiculously ill-balanced because wizards, being supernatural, clearly should have had the advantage. Alas, stupid, ignorant, traditional wizards, despite whatever skill in magic they had, proved to be a rather easy prey for now hot-on-their-heels muggles, who decided that common enemy was enough to unite all of their resources into neutralising that threat.

Hugo affectionately called this phenomena as neo-witchhunts. Long disillusioned from wizarding world's reality, Hugo would even claim that wizards themselves were to blame for their stupidity and therefore for getting found out by the non-magicals, and as a result deserved to be hunted. He would do so if he weren't offended that he now was unable to travel the world as he pleased and that many innocent magical children had taken the blade for the adults' bigotry and narrow-mindedness.

Hugo might not care much for others but he had principles, or standarts, at the very least and toying with the line of right and wrong meant suffereing from nightmares which he did not wish to himself at all.

Hundred meters underground in a huge former 'lab', for simplicity's sake, under Geneva, the center of anything and everything democratic, in a country that was so conformist its previous generations had practically moulded neutrality into their national mentality, Hugo and his two maniac friends felt completely safe as they prepared the ritual site.

Three years ago, when the hunts had reached the peak and Hugo had approached Lysander and Lorcan, at the time hiding in the Gobbi desert, to help him with his 'project' of time travel, the three had drawn straws that Hugo conjured (not a coincidence) to determine which one of them would actually travel back in time and have the freedom among them oldies. Naturally, Hugo had won, much to Lysander's disappointment, because the twin had always loved vintage and what could be more vintage than before his parents' time.

Then twenty-somethings had combined their brains together, traveled all over the world, nearly avoiding capture multiple times, visiting such landmarks like that old Mayan city - a complete hoax, in Hugo's proffesional opinion, as everything magical there was done circa twentieth century as a tourist attraction, and the supposed gone or sunken city of Atlantis, which proved to be a collosal disapointment because the merepeople living there had no desire to help with their problem and had merely wished to go along with their lives as before the intrusion.

Admittedly, the latter trip had started a bit too showy - the three had interrupted the Atlantis's equivalent of a Superbowl tournament. And merepeople were very serious when it came down to their sports (Fishing-net avoidance, shark-multi duel, oil-avoidance, litter-avoidance, whale-race, race-under-boats and so on).

Really, why had they bothered to be surprised when they were shown the exit? But those merepeople had silly meretalk accent, anyways, as Lorcan had so knowledgeably decreed, so they moved on and tried not to feel disheartened.

So now, Hugo was standing inside an even circle, its diameter being the exact value of pi - as exact as magically determined calculations could be - in metres. They were in Switzerland, after all, so they had to obey the metrical system they used there. It was good manners, to quote Lysander.

The outer part of the circle was ornated by wriggly lines - arabic, something only Hugo could somewhat decipher (they used enchanted stamps to deal with that part) and an occasional rune - Norsic, exactly the ones they were taught in Hogwarts about, and last but not least, exactly four Egyptian hieroglyphs, detailing their version of alfa and omega at four sides of the outer circle, one for each side of the world.

Hugo was pacing nervously.

"Can we do this, like, right now?!" He finally whined, crossing his arms in a defensive posture and glaring at Lorcan who was meditating.

Or sleeping. You could never know with that evil twin.

"Uno momento." Lorcan sleepily replied, yawning and stretching in a reminiscent way Hugo's sister's cat, IQ, did. "We have to wait for Derry. He would never forgive me if I sent you sayonara while he was ascending the throne."

Hugo scowled petulantly, and it had nothing to do with his overall maturity. Confined places just brought the kid out of him.

"Derry would not even remember, "Hugo muttered. "You wouldn't even remember." He sighed. It was just too much effort to argue, he knew that from experience.

For two geniuses that had double the normal intelligence as they almost shared the brains, the twins could be very stupid - that stupidity came solely from their upbringing that had stressed the importance of principles and traditions.

"That's not the point." Lorcan smiled, his expression a mask of joy that could almost fool Hugo. Almost, but not quite. Hugo glanced back, morosely. They were saying goodbye, here, most likely destroying their families from ever existing, erasing anything they had ever done, every tidbit of goodness, silliness, every memory.

It was only natural for twins to want to delay the 'launch', so to speak.

"Right." Hugo conceded. "Then brief me, L." He attempted to distract his friend.

"You will arrive at this exact location precisely in 1972. You will have to get to the surface in approximately thirteen minutes as the temporal space impediment would only keep this circle and you safe for that long. I'd suggest going to Bernese Alps, myself."

Hugo rolled his eyes.

"You say that just because you think it's funny there's a municipality named after a Dark Lord."

"Cool, huh? Grindelwald helped Hitler to rise to power, killed eons of people and he has a place named after him." Lorcan's smile turned wistful. "Name something after us when you get there, 'kay, Hugh?"

"Sure." Not on your life, Hugo thought.

"So, then you should go to the Central UBS office, place some gold in it, get some shares.."

"Yes, yes, take care of the papers." Hugo continued for Lorcan.

They had prepared authentic muggle documents that made him a muggle citizen of Switzerland legally. It, of course, needed to be updated in the general system after his arrival, but the min-crawleys - the bugs with rewrital function his late Uncle George had once upon a time invented (Strictly auror regulated use, naturally, to utilise when infiltrating criminal networks). Hugo also had an entire endless bag filled with gold in any shape or form, though Hugo himself sneered at the importance the previous generations had put on gold when Platinum was much more crucial or useful.

"I still can't believe you're using Victor Hugo as your alias." The blond looked a little bemused as he got seated more comfortable on the ground, lotus pose tiring out his muscles.

"Oh, L, it's the perfect name, believe you me."

The name was a sardonic jab at his parents. His parents, who were Mr and Mrs 'Diamonds-are-forever' Weasley that only lasted till his father, Ron Weasley, had decided to run off to a remote island of Borah-Borah as part of his mid-life crisis package.

It was a trend that year, as uncle Harry had bought a Quodpot team and became it's manager-slash-trainer despite never having even played the sport and not knowing the rules at all. Suffice to say he got laid off from Auror Office for it.

As Hugh's mother was not one for following trends of any kind, she was not amused at the ridiculous antics her husband displayed and posed an ultimatum to him.  
Neither wanted to bulge so their fall-out was inevitable.

Hugo's sister, Rose, had been devastated, unlike him. Hugo approached life with a much simpler philosophy. So what if his parents had split, so what if his mother had remarried to a (then) the director of IQL - International Quiddtich League - Victor Krum, an old flame of hers if you believed the tabloids, so what if his dad got himself arrested and sentenced for three years in Azkaban while trying to do Krum's head in with a shovel for it. It hadn't affected Hugo personally, at all, because he still got his weekly allowance, which even increased when Krum decided to pitch in (most likely to avoid any other 'misunderstandings' with muggle digging equipment).

So, naming himself as Victor Hugo meant that he had the opportunity to use his real name and make his metaphorical parents (as they would cease to exist when he would rewrite the history) turn in their respective metaphorical graves.

"Ok, then." Lorcan answered. "So, after dealing with the finances, you should go to London-"

"Nah-" A voice interrupted them. Lysander 'Derry' Scamander was back from his little tour and had magical amplifiers (recent inventions of his, which were made to enhance magical power several times) floating after him in a neat line as he entered the 'scene of the crime'. "You should go to a Swisses magical district, buy a couple of House - elves, you know, just to get into the role of a loaded oligarch."

"Pff." Hugo sounded mocking. "You just want to live through me as I buy out all the house elves and keep them without any taxes."

It had been Lysander's life ambition to revoke Hugo's mother's life work - the Equal Rights bill - as it meant that every single house-elf had to be paid and Derry - not having any visible financial security - was not able to employ them for his uses. This ambition became less important to Lysander when muggles started killing off stupid, weak, heroic or, even, retaliating wizards who didn't hurry to hide from the technological eye that watched the earth consistently and saw everything, making said hunts so much more easier.

"Maybe." Derry answered, his mouth curving into a sheepish smirk that quickly morphed into a stony mask, when he thought of what that bill prevented him from achieving.

Derry's opinion was not, as Hugo believed, unfounded as it was almost scientifically proven that house elves had much more magical potential than wizards or witches did. In fact, they could do short of anything that didn't go against the Gamp's laws of Improbability and Impracticality (The extension of Gamp's laws of Elemental Transfiguration), that were completely defined by the 2020s, when the final experiment, made by Theodore Lupin, had proven that one could not in fact stretch any space to infinity, just to a very large space that was directly proportional to the space's numerical value, multiplied by one hundred as an exponent.

It had taken Teddy years to do it. Unfortunately, Teddy wasn't able to bask in the scientific glory for long as muggles had discovered the wizarding world shortly after.

Though Derry had done only limited research on the subject of house elf abilities, he figured that house - elves had operated their magic differently, therefore could negate wizard magic with only intent, an intent that was supposed to rise from the insistence of their master, as they were slave species inside out.

At least until Hugo's mother had screwed up the balance by instating their 'equity'.

"Can you blame me, though? You're a lucky sod to have the opportunity to make the world play by your cards, Hugo."

Bitterness, envy, anger - Derry had a much wider pallet of emotions than his 'evil' twin had, that made distinguishing the two brothers from each other possible despite them being visually identical. As far as the good twins went, Hugo was sure Lysander was shoe in for the scariest-of-them-all award. In fact the only reason Lorcan had been dubbed the evil twin, despite his milder attitude, was because he had chosen to dress up as Lord Voldemort for one Halloween Party when he was in his preteens. Since then his 'evilness' was cemented, never to be questioned.

"Right." Lorcan decided to cut in, sensing how uncomfortable Hugo was by the undercurrents. "It's time, don't you two think?"

"Almost midnight." Hugo agreed.

"Fine." Lisander said. "But I still think you cheated in the straw draw."

* * *

**1972 **

* * *

**Sandiego, California, U.S.A. Palomar Observatory.**

Five minutes till midnight. That was the official time when the two astronomers, N.M. and A.S. had recorded the supernova, called 1972e, for the first time. It almost seemed that the sector of the sky was clear and ordinary until one minute a bright cluster appeared, clearly indicating the remains of a star.

The two bemused scientists had no choice but to record the anomaly, making it seem as ordinary as they could. Appearing abnormal or eccentric was a career suicide among any researchers, after all.

They had no idea at all that the phenomena was a result of a magical surge which was a consequence of four dimensions - width, lenght, depth and duration - curling into each other as three magical humans, using selective, amplified supernatural energy, interfered with the universe as it is known.

Every action has a reaction that could be labeled the aftermath, and creating a previously unexistant supernova was a side effect of a time travel that warped time more than sixty years back.

* * *

**London, Great Britain.**

After taking a short holiday at a skiing resort near Grindelwald principality (completely muggle, however ridiculous it may be), time traveler Hugo Weasley, now Victor Hugo, had taken care of his finances by selling bars of gold to muggles to use the exchanged newfound wealth however he pleased. Some of which Hugo wasted by buying an expensive villa in Breton, France - a safe house, that was not under any British jurisdiction if he had ever got caught while disobeying the law. The other half was converted to galeons - universal currency of the wizarding world with which he purchased two house elves, both of which could not speak even rudimentary English.

With the help of the two elves and his equipment, either once upon a time sold by WWW or recreated by using uncle George's designs, Hugo managed to 'hack', for the lack of better term, into the muggle system to make his Victor Hugo identity legit. It was much more harder to do so in the wizarding system so Hugo delayed it. Besides, Voldemort was currently at large and Hugo had no doubt that if the self-proclaimed Dark Lord heard about a wealthy foreign wizard living in Britain, he would try to kill or threaten the said wizard, all to accumulate some capital.

This was what Hugo had not learned from history books or family stories, both sources were quite inaccurate when it came to Voldemort's First war politics.

Apparently Voldemort used kidnappings and murder threats towards wealthy but neutral wizards as his main income. In Hugo's opinion, it was very by-the-book evil of Voldemort and completely uncreative. After all, who prevented Voldemort from stealing muggle money, multiplying it and then buying valuables or gold with it? Courtesy towards muggles? At least, that was the course of action Hugo planned to take in case he ever ran out of cash.

Goblins, at least, would be happy to exchange gold to galleons as it would be beneficial to them. After all, unlike everyone thought, Hugo knew, having Bill Weasley, who worked at Gringotts and with goblins for the better part of his life, as an uncle, that galeons weren't actually made out of gold. Every single coin was made from Goblin Steal, the metal ores of these could only be found in areas of high content of magic and therefore were rare.

Limited money supply was the reason why even such pricey magical nations living in, for example USA and Sweden, had never experienced inflation.

* * *

After taking care of the legal problems, Hugo traveled to London, two invisible companions in tow.

There he spent weeks by planning his later move as he lived in the muggle London, frequently visiting Diagon alley incognito.

Despite the fact his initial plan didn't figure getting rid of Voldemort, Hugo updated it so it would. From whichever angle he viewed the problem, Voldemort still had to go, and go fast along with all his followers.

Starting with Voldemort's horcruxes, perhaps?

* * *

When Hugo was a teenager, attending Hogwarts was pure torture. He got to frequently see the majority of his cousins, live in shared rooms and deal with prejudice that came with him being a Slytherin.

In fact, the only thing that made his days bearable was Albus's Tournament.

Albus, his older cousin, was also a Slytherin. It made him more of an outcast than Hugo in their extended family, because Al was the doppelgänger of his father, a great hero, therefore similar behavioral attributes was expected of him.

Al hated expectations. He detested them and ignorant people so much that he thought of a game to appease his anger. In all actuality it was less of a game and more of a revenge as the info discovered could be used against anyone incriminated. The goal was to find out every single secret anyone who pissed him, Albus, and later Hugo or other members, off. They had a board with results and betting ring, as was appropriate.

Few other people joined it, mostly Slytherins. It operated, of course, under a secrecy contract that prevented any player from spreading the information about the existence of such a club. The only information they could use to their advantage was what they had personally uncovered.

Unlike Hugo, who focused on their teachers, O.W.L and N.E.W.T examinators or his sister (who had a penchant for mucking things up for Hugo because of a misguided idea of helping him), Albus focused solely on his father, uncovering things that the general public and even those closest to him - Hugo's parents, Al's mother - had no idea about.

It took some time but during his final year, Albus had managed to piece the whole story of how his father had defeated Voldemort - something that was a subject of constant speculation and rumours - together.

The club had watched the pevensie with trepidation afterwards. A presentation like that had made a permanent residence in Hugo's memory. He doubted even a memory charm could get rid of it.

Every tidbit of information how Voldemort got his immortality, where those pieces of soul resided, how to destroy them - all this Hugo knew by heart because of it.

* * *

The first was Ravenclaw's diadem. It was easiest to access as Hogwarts had many entryways and little security asides from it's reputation. Hugo, safe under his invisibility suit - something Hugo had made using his uncle George's instructions after arriving at this time -, had analysed the wards surrounding the school and decided that people were sheep as they believed Hogwarts to be a fortress when in fact nothing short of unforgivables could alert the faculty or the headmaster of foul play.

Hugo then sneaked in, using the honey-dukes passage for the first time in his life - at his time it was permanently destroyed by spell damage no one could repair.

It was a memorable experience, to say the least.

As he traveled to the castle and finally to the supposed floor where the overwhelming come-and-go room existed, Hugo contemplated one of the exceptions of Gamp's Impossibility and Improbability laws. Before 2000, no one had ever defined the paradox that damage done by some spells could be repaired while other spells made the damage permanent. His uncle George was a primary example of that, having only one ear.

It gist of it was, apparently, that the spell's intent made all the difference. Dark intents - to kill, maim or malignantly demolish - created unrepairable damage. That was why after the final battle a lot of Hogwarts couldn't be rebuilt at all, or had to be rebuilt the muggle way which delayed the schooling considerably.

Hugo wondered if he should use this and other knowledge to gain profit later, after he got rid of Voldemort. Maybe.. Possibly. If need ever arose, definetely.

Despite being a sceptic at heart, Hugo had great expectations for the Room of Requirement. Fortunately it had exceeded them marginally. Finding the horcrux among the piles upon piles of junk proved to be an easy task when Hugo used his goggles, charmed to see only dark objects.

It was a real shame that it was nearly impossible to save the object that housed a soul when destroying said soul. According to Al, it could be done only if there was a pure, honest self sacrifice involved, and despite the fact that the object at hand was Ravenclaw's lost diadem - a founder's relic, Hugo doubted any fan would go such lenghts as to sacrifice themselves to save the thing.

As Hugo didn't have any basilisk venom, the only way he could do so was by performing Avada Kedavra.

Avada Kedavra that would definitely alarm the faculty, dammit.

Hugo thought for a moment about using Fiedfyre but he was not skilled in it. Unlike the killing curse that was untraceable and was fairly safe for the user, Fiendfyre had less than ten percent success rate.

He sighed. Of course there was no need to rush, Hugo had time, but he wanted to deal with Voldemort as quickly and quietly as possible. Smuggling an item that would undoubtedly affect his mentality with its wickedness because he didn't forsee the need to bring something that could withstand magical compulsions was not the way to go.

Hugo prided himself on being a genius but that didn't mean he could see the easiest paths immediately. Intelligence had a habit of making things more complicated than they should be.

Eventually, though, Hugo had called one of his house elves and had it transport the horcrux to their residence safely and place it in the safety compartment.

Then Hugo had smacked his head when he realised that he could have asked the said house elf to transport him to Hogwarts in the first place.

As it were, Hugo settled for a comfortable exit via house elf apparition.

* * *

Horcrux number two was the Gaunt ring. As far as attaining it, Hugo didn't see any major difficulties. He had inspected the Gaunt Shack where it was hidden from afar a few times and had decided that bypassing the wards would not be very challenging though it could take some time to do it quietly. After all, the wards that were constructed around it had been made by a freshly graduated dark wizard. Hugo could deal with it.

The only doubt Hugo had was that, after experimenting with Ravenclaw's diadem by trying to destroy it with various other means that were not included in the list of possible ways to destroy horcruxes, Hugo was disappointed with his findings.

He had tried to dissolve the diadem in Aqua Regia - a mixture of acids that could dissolve noble metals - and was unsuccessful. He tried using thermite - muggle explosive - and there was not even a dent on the thing. Then in a desperate attempt, Hugo tried to destroy it with condensed Nundu breath and Acromantula venom, stab it with Manticore's stinger..

Nothing worked. In the end Hugo simply intoned the magic words and the green bolt destroyed the horcrux, making it scream, bleed and crack in half.

Unlike Al or later the Scamander twins, Hugo felt that there was something more to Deathly Hallows than them merely being objects created by three exceptional wizards. Of course, he didn't believe they were created by death, but Hugo was sure that the only reason the Gaunt ring had survived a blow from a sword, coated in basilisk venom without the stone's function getting destroyed, was because someone had figured how to ward an object from something as toxic as Basilisk venom.

As a result it made Hugo reluctant to use Avada Kedavra on the ring because he doubted the ring was an exception of gamp's law, too.

Hugo wanted the stone to function after he destroyed it.

Finally he concluded that it would be a problem he would deal with after obtaining other objects.

* * *

Number three was the Hufflepuff's cup. Hugo had no confirmation whether it was already placed in Belatrix Lestrange's vault. It was 1972, so he had to figure out whether she was already married and already one of Voldemort's followers. This task he dedicated to his house elves, making them search for the vile woman.

This was were them not knowing any English proved to be problematic as while they could easily communicate with Hugo, who prided himself with being almost fluent in French, they could not understand a word of english, as apparently people were not concerned with making them properly understandable (To quote one of Hugo's new elves, a traditionalist) it was impossible to accomplish the said task.

So Hugo had to get some English Speaking house-elves and he couldn't do it in Britain without registering as a citizen of British soil because House elves could be only purchased there through the ministry (and apparently the black market didn't offer house elves because of little demand).

Hugo, annoyed that his plans were progressive so slowly, had sent his house elves to Canada.

He figured that as Canada was officially independent from Great Britain and as it had both English and French as the main languages there was a good chance they could get french and english speaking house elves without raising any attention to the one who would purchase them.

In the mean time, Hugo made a list of his following moves. First, he had to figure out where Voldemort was keeping the Slytherin's locket. Hugo remembered clearly that it was placed at some remote cave only in 1979 so there must be another location Voldemort was keeping it in.

Or perhaps he was wearing it?

Hugo didn't think the dark lord was a person for wearing jewelry, but who knew, really?

Secondly, Hugo had to figure where Voldemort was keeping his diary. The thing couldn't be already trusted to Lucius Malfoy. Hugo was sure he was still attending Hogwarts as he was younger than Hugo's grandparents who were expecting uncle Charlie at the moment, being only a year or two out of Hogwarts.

Visiting his grandparents like a thief or a pervert was not something that Hugo wished to repeat. He had performed a few wards and a luck ritual that Scamander twins had taught him and then Hugo had left, his heart clenched in bitterness that he was surprised to feel had not been permanently buried in his conscience or at least appeased by the fact Molly and Arthur Weasley looked nothing like his grandparents because of their youth.

However, discovering Voldemort would definitely prove to be more challenging than his grandparents and very dangerous. Too dangerous that Hugo would personally attempt but not dangerous enough so that stealthy house elves could not go look for him.

Lysander was right. Having house elves made everything so much easier.

Subsequently in his plan figured the search for Basilisk venom that he could use to destroy the ring safely. Unlike Nundu Breath or Manticore's stinger, which he bought from a black market salesperson without a problem in the Knockturn alley, or the vial of Acromantula venom he had acquired by killing one giant spider (with great glee, too, because Hugo had a hereditary dislike for spiders) in the Forbidden Forest, looking for Basilisk venom proved to be very problematic.

British market had no sales for it, and professional breeders were near impossible to find without connections to the underworld.

There was always the possibility of breeding one himself but Hugo mentally placed it in 'no other options' category.

Anything else, like making Ministry's laws more useful to his purpose - saving the wizarding world from muggles, could not be done without Voldemort out of his way.

* * *

His house elves spent an entire month while searching for the other house elves that fit Hugo's (and, as he suspected, their) requirements. Later he had found that the six elves - his two swiss ones and the four others - had traveled around the Canada, visiting muggle Disneyland in the process as a bonding experience.

Hugo couldn't even be cross with them, despite the fact that for a whole month he had to cook meals for himself - boiled eggs, scrambled eggs, mashed potatoes or ham sandwiches, the latter also being in the meal category as Hugo had survived on nothing but sandwiches more than one occasion, especially during his original time, after muggles renewed the witch hunts.

After all, a house elf's life was extremely boring. Besides, being respectful and lenient or understanding towards them made the elves more loyal.

So, after they returned, he sent the english speaking ones to search for Bellatrix and Voldemort, and later the remaining horcruxes while Hugo and his remaining servants looked for Basilisk venom outside U.K.

A search that was interrupted in the middle December, when Hugo decided to polijuice as a Saint Mungos healer and deliver his own uncle Charlie.

The only uncle who didn't begrudge Hugo being a Slytherin to his face and kept his disapproval to himself.

* * *

**1973**

* * *

Private ceremony of the union of Bellatrix Black and Rodolphus Lestrange took place in January. The Lestrange manor - a sophisticated if somewhat morbid (it had a Maosoleum in its backyard), spacious place was where they exchanged their vows.

Hugo had planned for the event carefully, trying to anticipate every what-if scenario.

He had polijuiced as one of the guests of the after party - as a Knight of Walpurgis, Korvin Yaxley. Hugo was shocked to learn that Voldemort had not started using the name Death Eaters from the start. Apparently, while he did already mark his followers with the Dark Mark, there were still few of them who were of common descent. Most members were from the upper crowd, which deemed Knight of Walpurgis as a more suitable name, perhaps.

Or maybe the name 'Death eaters' was dubbed by the media at some point of time and Voldemort and his cronies had simply followed the trend.

Hugo, as he had per the information his elves had uncovered, knew that Bellatrix Black and the Lestrange brothers were already loyal to Voldemort. While learning the location of Voldemort's residence proved easy, Hugo was unable to learn where he kept his horcruxes asides from the fact that Voldemort planned to give something priceless to Bellatrix as a wedding gift and reward for her services. Hugo had no wish to find out the extent of those services.

After his elves had relayed that information, it became clear to Hugo that Voldemort was giving Bellatrix the cup, mostly because nothing aside himself could be priceless to Voldemort, the egomaniac.

Then and there Hugo decided upon hands on approach. He might have trusted his house - elves but they were best for spying and remaining inconspicuous and the longer Hugo had them, the more it became obvious that all of them were terrified of the dark lord, making it more likely for them to mess up if Hugo was to order them do something like switch horcrux with a fake before it was tucked safely in Gringotts.

Hugo had no wish to break in there. Repercussion from Goblins was the stuff of nightmares.

* * *

The wedding was interesting to say the least. Hugo got a chance for the first time to mingle among the Dark Wizard Elite (his Slytherin years were insufficient experience as a great deal of Slytherins during his time of schooling were actually muggleborn). He made small talk with those few who approached him, exchanged nods and mentally catalogued every face into memory. Hugo was certain he would use a pensieve his elves had bought to view the memory at home, to figure out who was allied with the Blacks, Lestranges and, possibly, at least sympathised the Dark Lord.

However to say that all of the guests were dark wizards would be a misconception. Some were merely relations or aquentances with a proper standing, who could, perhaps, be persuaded to see the light and join the cause. Every single public events like weddings, or funerals, or birthshowers, or even birthdays were a pretext for society to mingle and for propaganda to be spread.

Among those innocent bystanders, Hugo got to meet with Andromeda Tonks.

Well, Andromeda Black at that moment, as the nineteen-year-old was yet to marry a muggleborn and to get disowned. However Hugo knew that Andromeda was already dating the muggleborn Tonks, perhaps even pregnant with Teddy's mom, and this might as well be the last pureblood even she would ever participate in.

She had sent him a stony look when he kissed her hand - the greeting, which was appropriate for greeting a witch of pureblood standing. Logically Hugo knew that Andromeda did it because she detested puritists and Hugo was pretending to be one, Yaxley, and that even if they were to meet with their own faces, Andromeda would treat him as mere stranger because at this point of time that was exactly what they were - strangers.

All logic notwithstanding, the coldness stung, because Teddy's grandmother was a Slytherin herself and in his time had helped Hugo and Al so much by explaining the hierarchy and all the power plays that tended to occur there. She supported the two, going as far as to making herself, and even Teddy, for a while, unwelcome at the Burrow with her accusations of prejudice and misguided righteousness that Hugo's family had a penchant for. In short, Andromeda was perhaps the toughest and most reliable rock in Hugo's life, till her death and beyond.

* * *

After the ceremony and the party, the majority of the guests, including the couple's parents had left while the Knights of Walpurgis had stayed for the after party, settling into the drawing-room while they awaited their lord.

This was the first time Hugo got to see Lord Voldemort in person. Other people's memory had a tendency to be unreliable and history books had no photographs of him. It seemed no one ever thought of taking his picture, for whatever reason. Still, compared to what Hugo knew, Lord Voldemort of the seventies was much more human, had a pale, ghastly look and blood-shot eyes, that held calculating and inspecting glaze.

Hugo shuddered involuntarily.

To him, Voldemort's current appearance reminded of a walking and talking wax manikin, not unlike the one from Madame Tudor's house, just without any colour and with oddly distorted features.

And asides from Voldemort being perhaps the most dangerous wizard Hugo had ever encountered, he had a huge dislike for manikins. They were creepy, and weird, and Hugo avoided them as best he could.

During the after party, the focus had shifted to the Dark Lord. Voldemort and his followers discussed their goals for the immediate future, what Dumbledore was doing, who they could recruit or which bill one of their own who were a Wizengamot member could try to pass and so on, surprising Hugo by the enthusiasm with which some of 'Knight of the Walpurgis' had participated in the discussions, pitching in their part, as respectable as they could, bouncing off ideas of each other.

Hugo could somewhat see the initial attraction such a club could have to certain individuals. His late sister, Rose, would have loved the possibility of intelligent debate that she felt she lacked in Hogwarts and had pointed that out on one than more occasion. Perhaps Hugo miscallculated when he evaluated Voldemort and his forces as innane and ill-organised. It was a distint possibility that as more and more people were joining in, the behavior became more erratic and more raids had to be held in order to placate them.

Despite such thoughts that began to cloud his mind; utilising patience and skill, Hugo had managed to place mini-bugs on every death eater, excluding Bellatrix or the Lesranges who were much to close to the Dark Lord for Hugo's liking.

Hugo, of course, couldn't avoid greeting said Lord with the appropriate bow but asides from that he managed to limit the experience to minimum.

At the end of the after party, Voldemort had taken Bellatrix and her new husband aside, supposedly to give his personal congratulations.

Hugo knew that it would be impossible to follow them without any death eater noticing Yaxley's disappearance, so he concentrated on a wandless spell - something that always exhausted him and an action he practised at great lengths so as to accomplish it. Said wandless spell had attached a recorder bug - the only one he had left in his arsenal as Hugo proved to be a little short-sighted on how many death eaters (or Knights of whatever) there would be at the ceremony.

The bug would be useless to pin point the location of the horcrux but it would at least record the conversation, timing the time it would take to get to the said temporary place from the drawing-room. Hugo was certain he could find it that way, with the help of his goggles, which identified dark magic.

Of course, since it was a dark wizard manor, it could possibly be whole ablaze when looking through those charmed lenses.

Placing the bugs was the only thing Hugo could do at the moment, so he relaxed as best he could, chewed on some cauldron cakes, while actually consuming another Polijuice tablet - a patented way to remain under the effects of the potion for the better part of twenty-four hours, and struck up a conversation with Rookwood, the only one, in Hugo's opinion, who was perceptive and paranoid enough to notice he was not Yaxley.

Rookwood worked in Department of Mysteries, a department which figured in Hugo's later plans as a possible resource to use in order to prevent the muggle aggression.

* * *

Guests started leaving an hour after midnight, some choosing to floo while others disapparated. Hugo followed the latter group and pretended to apparate. It was a trick Hugo learned from Albus, his older cousin, who practically dedicated all of his younger years developing or finding techniques that would make spying easier.

It was relatively simple if one practised a lot. While normal disapparition was done by either turning on one's heel while holding the wand or turning their wand in a rotating motion (the latter way being more time efficient but used by more skilled magicians), in order to pull off pretend disapparition, one had to use a phony wand (in Hugo's case - Yaxley's wand) and turn it in rotating motion while making an Orpheus's move (A move which was a simplified part of Audio magic whose popularity had risen approximately at the time of Hugo's birth when wizards started to get interested in what music the market had to offer) - twirling the wand between thumb and forefinger back and forth. They also had to use another wand to make themselves invisible with invisibility spell, a spell much easier than disillusionment (which made users blend into their surroundings) but had to be performed with utmost focus so as not to make the grass or pavement underneath them invisible.

Both spells separately were easy but performing any two spells at the same time required difficulty.

Albus had debated the possibility of creating a timed device that could turn on and off an invisibility field around the person (the same principle WWW invisibility hats worked) but Hugo had no idea whether his cousin had accomplished it as Albus had disappeared from Hugo's and his whole family's life shortly after Hugh's graduation.

To Hugo pretend apparition was a skill he mastered inadvertally during his summer vacations when he was put on cleaning duty. To save time he learned how to do both dish washing and dusting charms in synch with the same concentration.

Suffice to say more than one repairo had been cast in the process.

* * *

The night was dark. It was new moon and since it was a wizarding manor and wizards tended to either use magic or archaic methods of lighting like candles or torches, the manor's vicinity was drowing in black.

The nearby Mausoleum did nothing to appease Hugo but he carried on into the manor, entring it via window, that his senior house elf, which he had summoned just after every guests had cleared out, had opened.

His senior house elf had the instruction to keep quiet, invisible and untraceable and only enter the house if Hugo was in danger of getting caught.

Hugo sneaked into the manor invisible and charmed with Auditive Perception Filter, created by the Japanese. The filter charms were strictly for Law Enforcement, so naturally within a year everyone knew about them and wanted to learn how to do them. However, it seemed that only the most patient could achieve results and while Hugo was not one known for patience, he thriwed for results, so he persevered and managed to learn them.

It had taken some time but after transfiguring his eyes into owl ones and putting on the goggles, which showed dark magic objects, Hugo was finally able to find the horcrux's location thogh he had to listen to the recorded conversation to be able to open the safe.

Fortunately for Hugo, Lestrange's personal safe didn't have a DNA trigger but rather opened upon auditory comand, one just had to speak the right words.

After replaicing said horcrux - Hufflepuff's cup - with a carefully created copy, a copy that required months of carefully placed transfiguration spells and charms, Hugo had taken the horcrux and fled the house as fast he could.


End file.
